Muscle Memory
by Rokhal
Summary: Very little of Hellish education has real-world applications. Dean discovers it's more than enough. Early season 5, sometime after 5:4.


Disclaimer: I stole this. For all the good it does me.

* * *

It was a rush job, and they were frayed, the world running in hazy loops around their heads, but their steps were sure and bullets never needed sleep.

A schoolbus full of kids disappeared in a town Vermont's Satanists seem to use for their biennial cat-burnings, and faithfully the Winchesters arrived, propelled beyond the bounds of human endurance by steel and gasoline and No-Doze, eyes chill-burning with human rage that needs no augmentation. Good times, old times. _Hey again, Sammy._

Across the parlor, Sam strode easily over the brass and gleam of a shattered chandelier, brandishing his pistol and a roll of duck tape. Mushrooms and wine sauce dribbled down his ear like brains, and his voice thundered like his father's. "Face the wall, hands above your heads." Chip and Dale slung white-rimmed eyes at Short, Dark, and Brainless, who slumped moaning on the floor, probing the gory hole that used to be his kneecap, and they decided not to make Sam repeat himself a second time.

Tape squawked from the roll.

Under Dean's hand, Gandolf chuckled. Subtle gold wristwatch, silk shirt, the seal of Orias inked within a little triangle over his sternum. His brown eyes were keen for his seventy years.

Under Sam's gun, Chip, Dale, and Brainless sat bound, hobbled, and slumped against the wall. "I saw this game once on daytime TV," Sam told them softly, teeth flashing. He loosed a round into the drywall just over their heads, and three pairs of eyes craned backward and upward toward the puff of dust. He waited, steady as an oak, until the ringing faded and they could hear again. "Jefferson Middle School route three. Last guy to talk loses."

Panicked yelping and pleading. Dean cocked an eyebrow and Sam grimaced.

The old guy was still grinning, even bent backward over the oak buffet table with china shards digging into his back. "You'd have better luck milking the Merril Lynch Bull than getting one coherent thought out of those meatheads," he hissed. "There's a little protocol you've probably never heard of, compartmentalization of sensitive intelligence? Every tool has a purpose, a place for everything and everything in its place--"

"He says we're barking up the wrong tree, Sammy," Dean growled, jarring the man's head against the tabletop. He leaned closer. "How much was it for the legs, huh? Guy your age, don't even need orthopedic shoes?"

"Nothing Orias did not compensate." The old man raised his right hand, parchment over bone, and fluttered the fingers, tappity-tappity-flick. "He had healing even before the Rise. These nerves were dead, he brought them back--and he gave me _his word,_ and there is nothing, _nothing_ you can do to me that Orias will not repay tenfold once the exchange is finalized." His laugh was rich, not reedy. "I don't suppose you have the time, boy?" He smiled up from the tabletop, panting.

Solstice would tip over in about two hours.

Dean shifted his grip on the old man's throat: hook, claw in, stroke the sweet spots firm and gentle. _Timing is essential, like starting a finicky transmission uphill in second gear--you remember?_ Oh, Dean knew all about timing, with a car, with a loved one, with a woman; he'd never found a trick he couldn't learn. He found a salad fork in his left hand, and as the rings of the throat began to shudder under his grasp, he shoved the handle (_Precision, Dean!_) hard under the collarbone. Counted one, two, and release.

The old man's eyes bulged and his scream echoed like Sam's gunshot. Pressure just so turned the screams to dry rasps, pain into panic.

There was no such thing as a cheap shot if it got the job done, so Dean followed up with a knee to his crotch. Tears joined the old man's silent screaming, and Dean leaned close over his ear, dropping the fork for a butter knife, balancing it on his fingertips. "Pussing out already?" he murmured. "But I just got done sayin' hello."

_You need a challenge, Dean, take some care, some pride in your work. _

_Earth rules. Don't kill 'em._

As the old man wept and begged and blubbered out the locations of the children and the altar to Orias, Sam watched from across the room, an admiring _how did he do that?_ as plain on his face at twenty-six as at five.

As he guided the Impala through yet another tree-shadowed hairpin, the mansion at their back and the waiting altar to their front, Dean crushed his skilled hands against the steering wheel and wanted to be sick.

* * *

First foray into Supernatural. Yay me!


End file.
